MPAA Joins Web Standards Group Amid Digital Rights Controversy

What's This?Associations Now Brand Connection provides opportunities for advertisers to connect with the Associations Now audience. All content is paid for by the advertiser. The Associations Now editorial staff is not involved in creating this content.

Watchdog: Rethink the Ratings

The MPAA’s move into the W3C comes at a time where another major initiative of the organization—the long-in-use ratings system—is getting fresh scrutiny. On Wednesday, the Parents Television Council launched a call to overhaul the ratings systems for media violence on television and film, saying that little has changed in the year since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. “In one year, the industry has done nothing to reduce media violence, and new research shows the networks routinely assign age ratings for horrifically violent content on broadcast TV deeming it appropriate for children,” the organization said, according to The Wrap.

The World Wide Web Consortium, which has been considering controversial new digital rights management rules, says the Motion Picture Association of America—which has a vested interest in DRM—joined the group this week. Technology critics are skeptical.

The ongoing fight by the Motion Picture Association of America against online piracy hasn’t won it a lot of friends among the tech-oriented.

But this week, it’s the association’s new partnership fostered with a key technology group that has people talking: The MPAA has joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an organization led by web pioneer Tim Berners-Lee that works on standardizing the structure of the internet as a whole. More details:

A move with influence: MPAA, which represents the Hollywood’s major film studios, has long fought against piracy. By joining the W3C, the association has the potential to help influence the future of digital rights policy and standards for web browsers. “If you think about the most problematic elements of your WWW experience, they typically are associated with web sources that stray from W3C standards to add additional functionality or usability, such as sites that use Adobe’s proprietary Flash plug-in to [operate] correctly,” the tech site AfterDawn explains. A number of associations already have membership in the organization, including the National Association of Broadcasters, the Online Publishers Association, and the Digital Advertising Alliance.

A controversial alliance: The decision drew scrutiny from online critics and watchdogs that have often looked at MPAA’s antipiracy efforts with a skeptical eye. “Bringing the MPAA into the process only continues to perpetuate this idea that we should be building a broadcast platform for the entertainment industry to push a message at consumers, rather than building a platform for creators of all kinds to communicate and share,” argued Techdirt‘s Mike Masnick. The W3C’s move to push for digital rights management in the HTML 5.1 standard has received criticism from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which described the push as “a dangerous step for an organization that is seen by many as the guardian of the open Web to take.” As a W3C member, MPAA could directly influence this particular policy.